Step One
by ragabashing
Summary: Implied pre-relationship between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. No smut. Fulfilment of a prompt: Draw me like one of your French girls. Cross-posted to Ao3. Complete.
_A/N: Written to fill the prompt: 'Draw me like one of your French girls'. No smut, implied pre-relationship._

Tony Stark had not intended to like Steve Rogers. He had spent too much of his childhood being unfavourably compared to the man, so much of Howard's attention had always been focused on finding him. And really, how was that fair? How was he ever supposed to measure up, not when Rogers already had the jump on him by being dead. That automatically gave him a boost of at least two hundred percent to his nostalgic fondness levels. Tony had done the math once.

But then he wasn't dead, he was right there, and Tony finally had the chance to prove which one of them was better once and for all. Brains and technology beat out a muscle-man from the past who believed in truth and justice and all that crap. It was just a shame Howard wasn't alive to see the proof of who was obviously going to end up on top in this little contest. Not that he cared what Howard Stark thought, he hadn't cared for years before he died, that ship had long since sailed. But he did care about being _right_. He loved it when he was right. He loved it even more when he could show other people that he was right and they had to admit it.

There were just two major problems with being in a secret supremacy contest with Steve Rogers to win the love and affection of a man too dead to give out either. One, it was difficult to be in a contest with someone who didn't realise they were, in fact, in a contest at all. Two, Steve was irritatingly likeable, which took some of the fun out of it. Cheating, that's what it was. Heinous, underhanded, cheating.

Somehow a grudging resentment had turned into a grudging acceptance, a grudging friendship, and then a grudging crush. Or maybe it wasn't actually grudging any more, but it made him feel at least a little bit better to blame Steve for this as if it were all part of his nefarious plan and not something he remained totally and completely ignorant about. Tony was sure that a psychologist would have something to say about his desire for the man his father had all but neglected him for, but that thought train led down a bad route. Besides, he already knew he was messed up. Several magazines had printed articles on it already, he had his favourite one (a lengthy article diagnosing him with narcissistic personality disorder) taped above his mirror because he liked the irony. Whatever it said about it, it didn't stop him from wanting it. Wanting Steve.

It only got worse the longer they were forced to live in such close quarters. Jarvis did remind him once or twice that there _were_ sixteen other floors that he could take a bedroom in and that he didn't _have_ to have a bedroom on the same floor as the one he had assigned for Steve. But what did Jarvis know, anyway?

Tony wanted Steve, and Tony always got what he wanted. It was part of the whole billionaire playboy thing, and a part that he really enjoyed. A lot. So he just needed a plan of attack. Like a blueprint on how to successfully woo a man from a time period where homosexuality had still been considered a crime and who had never shown any interest in him whatsoever. Piece of cake. Step one was learning more about Steve in his private time. He wasn't sure what most of the steps after that were, but he was pretty sure it ended in step six being wild headboard rocking sex. It would all fall into place after step one.

"Sir, I feel it is my duty to inform you that this would count as a felony."

"Don't be a spoilsport, Jarvis." Tony grumbled, as he effortlessly hacked into Steve's Amazon account (honestly, teaching him the benefits of online shopping had been the best thing he ever did). "If he didn't want people knowing his purchase history, then he'd come up with a better password than his old regiment."

"I'll be sure to record that watertight defence for you to use at your trial, sir."

"Are you making fun of me, Jarvis?"

"I wouldn't dream of it, sir."

"Good, because I'm not above installing a different operating system. That Windows paperclip would be more loyal than you." Jarvis, the big coward, didn't even reply, so Tony turned back to his important reconnaissance work. "Now let's see what dirty little secrets our brave Cap is hiding. Nothing like a purchase history to show you who a man really is- paper? Really? He ordered fifteen notebooks of paper, that's it? Why would he even need paper, don't I have state of the art screens installed in every room for people to use? Is he saying my tech isn't as good as some outdated paper? I'm insulted, Jarvis."

The more he thought about it, the more intrigued and irritated Tony became. He had taught Steve personally how to use the various screens around and about, and they were more than a match for anything he might want paper for. Tony hated paper. It was bulky, it was hard to bring up something at a moment's notice that you wrote previously while half drunk and fully inspired, and it was bad for the planet. The only reason anyone living in a building jammed full of StarkTech had to use paper, was to keep it private from him. The _nerve._ The more he thought about it, the more it dug at his mind. He spent three solid days watching the security footage and following Steve from room to room with it in the hopes of glimpsing one of those notebooks.

"I feel it's my duty to warn you that you may be getting obsessed by this, sir." Jarvis warned him.

Tony only waved a hand dismissively and never took his eyes off the screen. "Good. I do my best work when I'm obsessed. Obsessed and drunk. Now shut up and get me a scotch if you want to be helpful."

"I'm sorry, sir, but I can't do that."

"What? Why not?"

"You promised Miss Potts that you wouldn't drink before four in the afternoon, and I agreed to assist her in regulating this agreement."

"You're a traitor, Jarvis. A filthy traitor."

"As you say, sir."

Why would someone try and keep what they were doing from him? And one of his very good friends no less. The only reasons he could come up with were filthy, which were accidentally corroborated by Steve when he pushed the notebook out of view immediately, flustered, the only time Tony had ever come close to getting a look at it. Now he burned to see what was inside. If there was a dark and kinky side to spangles then it was his duty to uncover it, exploit it, and then spend many hours enjoying it for himself.

Eventually, unable to stand it any longer, he resorted to a lower tech form of assault. Namely, one paperclip and his own wits. He had never jimmied a lock like this before, but he was a man of many talents (and youtube had a lot of videos on it), so it only took him an hour of swearing and fiddling before he got the door to Steve's room open. And it was disappointingly vanilla. Everything was in its proper place, neat as a pin, and there were no incriminating items of bondage wear scattered around. Just a closet full of boring clothes, a single bed with tightly tucked sheets, and a desk with- ah, the notebooks.

Tony's hands were sweating as he opened up the first one, only to be left staring at a beautifully detailed pencil drawing of himself. Another page, another drawing, this one of Natasha stood discussing something with Clint. Another, and another, and another. Pages upon pages of pictures of their team-mates, and of people that Tony had never met, people he recognised from his father's old photographs or news clippings. But what floored him wasn't that Steve Rogers was an artist – because of course he was a damn artist, why wouldn't he have a sensitive side just to add another dimension to his perfect perfectness. Asshole. It was that the more he flicked through the books, the more the pictures were of him. Sitting, standing, working on tech, a close up of his arc reactor, a close up of his eyes. Pages of just hands, but ones drawn so well that he knew they were his own.

"Tony! What are you doing in here?" Steve's voice cut through the silence with an annoyed snap. "You've been spying on me for days now, what for? What do you even want?"

Well.

Well, there was only one appropriate response to that, given the situation. Tony turned around, cocky smile on his face, and delivered it. "Draw me like one of your French girls."


End file.
